New Age Ghost
by Ashynarr
Summary: Alfred is on his way to be interviewed over the hype of his worldchanging discovery when he is abruptly kidnapped by people who want that same tech for themselves. His only chance of escape is in trusting the A.I. Known as Matthew who had been with him during the attack.


New Age Ghost (Hetalia)

Author: Ashynarr

Summary: Alfred is on his way to be interviewed over the hype of his worldchanging discovery when he is abruptly kidnapped by people who want that same tech for themselves. His only chance of escape is in trusting the A.I. Known as Matthew who had been with him during the attack.

Disclaimer: Hetalia's not mine.

Warning: Near-Future AU

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Alfred fussed with the hem of his rented suit, rocking back and forth on his feet while waiting for the car that was going to pick him up. It still hadn't entirely sunk in yet that he was going all the way to New York to be interviewed by _the_ Hetanews, one of the most prestigious international news sites currently on the web.

Then again, he hadn't really been expecting to be shoved into fame at the tender age of nineteen by stumbling across the formulas for an FTL engine that was within modern design and construction capabilities, either.

(Seriously, he'd just been looking through the notes Uncle Gilbert had brought with him from the ESA and had started going over some of the math in there. He hadn't even realized what he'd created until said uncle came in, looked over the notes, and started mumbling under his breath while taking the notes with him.

Three weeks later, and he'd woken up to his name headlining just about every news site on the planet; to be honest he still felt like he'd been dropped into some strange alternate universe instead.)

He checked his EyeView again; two minutes until they were supposed to show up. The little display shrank back into its box at the corner of his view while he sighed, glancing outside again as if that'd make them appear sooner.

"You alright there, kiddo?" Ellie Jones asked as she walked in, profound sympathy on her face.

"Nah, just nerves. It just doesn't - feel real, ya know?"

His mom nodded, stepping over to rest a hand on his shoulder. "You'll do fine, I promise; all you have to do is focus on the person you're talking to and not the cameras."

"You say that like it's easy knowing the whole world's gonna be watching you."

She laughed, something a bit more common nowadays than it had been a few years ago. "Of course it's not, otherwise everyone'd be a public speaker and nothing would ever get done. The important thing to remember is that you're a Jones-"

"And everyone in the Jones family is awesome by default." Alfred laughed softly, lightly shoving at her. "Trust me, I hear it enough from Uncle Gilbert as it is."

"And you'll probably hear it even more after this. I'm sure you'll manage, though." She smiled, patting him on the shoulder before stepping back. "By the way, your ride's here."

"It is?" He twirled to see the car waiting outside of his house, black and sleek and definitely important. "Shit shit why didn't you say that sooner-"

Eleanor Jones laughed as her son ran out the door in a frenzy, barely remembering his bag. He knew he was overreacting, so he stopped on the walkway out front, took two deep breaths, and walked the rest of the way to the car.

The door opened as he got close, allowing him to step inside without waiting. Apparently this was one of the newer driverless cars, as it was only him and the person who he'd been told would pick him up - "Matthew", wasn't it? How was he familiar, again?

"Hello there, Mr. Jones," The young man greeted, smiling as he nodded in greeting.

"Call me Alfred, please. It's nice to meet you…" The American extended a hand.

"Matthew, if we're going by first names." Matthew looked amused at the gesture, before taking it-

-or not, as the hand hand no weight when it settled onto his. It was about then that Alfred remembered Matthew was the name of the news crew's new A.I. reporter and fact checker, complete with projection equipment to let him interact in select parts of the real world, including this car, it seemed.

He flushed in embarrassment, looking away like he hadn't forgotten that critical detail, while the A.I. laughed softly.

"It's alright; that happens a lot when I meet people face to face for the first time. I appreciate the gesture anyways, even if I can't return it."

"Yeah, well," Alfred mumbled, fidgeting with his glasses while waiting for the embarassment to pass.

Matthew apparently noticed, as he looked over the glasses with interest. "Aren't those an older model EyeViewer? I didn't think they made them with hardware caches anymore."

"These were my mom's before she passed on," He admitted after a bit. "I sorta wear them since we had similar prescriptions and it kinda keeps her close, ya know?"

The A.I. hummed in interest, sitting back. "Do you mind-"

"I don't really wanna talk about it, sorry."

"Fair enough," Matthew replied, changing the conversation to something less personal. "Do you feel ready for the interview?"

"Should I?" Alfred asked rhetorically. "I'm still partially convinced I'm asleep and dreaming all this up."

"I hope that's not the case, or else the questions I've written up would all be useless."

Despite himself, Alfred laughed. "Damn, wouldn't want that to happen."

Matthew grinned as well, causing the American to briefly wish it wasn't just clever lighting with a personality sitting next to him.

They chatted about other recent events over the next few minutes, Alfred relaxing more as he got used to his companion's quirks. There was always that brief pause as he was looking up something, or the way his eyes would flicker like he was looking somewhere else, that would remind Alfred again that the person across from him wasn't actually human.

"Alfred, we're going the wrong way." He cut in at one point, frowning suddenly as he looked outside.

"What? But I thought these things had their routes locked in."

"Not if there's an accident that just showed up it wants to avoid, but I'm not seeing anything."

Alfred's glasses brought up his own news screen, which hadn't had any urgent updates since he'd last checked a half hour ago. He thought he briefly saw Matthew turn to relay a warning right before the world went up in flames around them.

Blinking slowly as his head rang, he lifted his head just enough to blurrily make out someone approaching through the smoke before everything faded into darkness.

~0~0~

Alfred woke slowly, his entire body feeling numb as his awareness of the world grew from a small patch of rocky floor to the faint knowledge of a darkened room with only a strip of sunlight bearing in.

The next thing to return after his sight was feeling; there was a pebble digging into his cheek, his whole body felt like it'd been done over by an angry cat, and his hands and ankles were bound together with something cool and metallic.

His breathing sharpened, horror dawning quickly as he realized he'd been kidnapped. It took a voice hissing in his ear to snap him away from the tempting idea of screaming or crying.

"Alfred! Calm down!"

"...Matt?" He asked once he was able to recognize the voice, looking around to try and catch a glimpse of the A.I.

"No, don't react or say anything, just blink once for yes or two for no if you need to answer something. I'm in your glasses - I never thought I'd be thankful for older technology before today."

Alfred's gaze slid to the corner of his glasses, where he thought he could see the faint red dot that indicated an active program even though nothing was coming up.

"Yeah, that's me. I can't do much with this little power besides talk to you, and I can't access the internet; I think whoever's kidnapped you put up a netblock. Can you see a door from where you are?"

Alfred looked away from the small dot, gaze wandering the room he could see until he finally saw the door Matt wanted him to see. He blinked once, then looked back to the dot that was currently his only companion.

"And there's no one else in here you can see?" Another single blink. "Alright, so I can catch you up on what I know. It's been about four hours since you were knocked out, and we've been travelling for a good chunk of that. I was able to shoot off our last location before the bomb went off, as well as download this fragment into your glasses, but I don't know where we are now. I'm guessing the main version of me will be helping track you down, but until then we're on our own."

The A.I. paused, then continued far more gently. "I promise I'm going to do my best to get you out of here, but I'm gonna need you to trust me, alright?"

"Kay," The American muttered softly as he could, closing his eyes and taking more deep breaths to try and calm down as much as he could.

Alfred wasn't sure when he dozed off, but the next thing he was aware of was a shoe coming down on his side and reviving the pain that'd dulled to mere throbbing a while back. He choked back half of the scream, looking through tears and exhaustion and possibly head trauma from the explosion at the person now standing above him.

The man was huge, even without accounting for the perspective, and had a nose and build to match. But those eyes - Alfred swallowed instinctively, looking away so that he didn't have to see the predatory gleam in them.

"Hello there, Jones," The man's voice rumbled, higher pitched than Alfred had imagined but somehow all the more nerve wracking for it. "It's good to see you finally join us."

"What do you want?" The American asked, grateful his voice didn't crack once.

"I thought it would be fairly obvious," The man replied, leaning down enough to run a cold hand under Alfred's chin. "I want the formula for your engine."

"Are you nuts?" He asked without thinking. "The ESA already has it; all the big names will have copies in a week tops!"

"Ah, but that is the issue, isn't it?" The man tilted Alfred's head up, forcing their gazes to meet. "All those governments whose days in space should have been numbered, allowing the private sector to take over… it was a natural death, as things should have been. And then you spark it all back to life."

Alfred winced as he was abruptly dropped back to the ground, the man standing up straight again. "So?"

"So? Is that all you have to say, knowing you singlehandedly ruined quite a few good names hoping to make some money giving people the access to space they always wanted?" The man tsked, looking amused. "But it can still be salvaged, of course. Governments have always been so slow about research and testing, like bears in winter. It will be years before they even have prototypes at best.

"The private sector does not have to deal with nearly so many hurdles, and the people would be so happy to have the engines sooner rather than later, even if a few steps were cut along the way to save on costs and time, yes?"

Alfred could help but balk. "Dude, that'll kill people!"

The man shrugged. "Space is dangerous, everyone knows that. A few lives lost here and there compared to all of the universe? People would throw themselves at us. You make it sound like the governments have not lost people in the name of progress in space."

The American remained silent for a long while, eyes shut in thought. Nothing the man had said was wrong; the private sector had taken a blow from the news, demanding access to the engines right away even while the governments still tried to determine whether the formulas would actually hold up with multiple runs. The private sector did tend to develop more on commercial platforms than the governments did, with a similar rate of accident to NASA or JSA or any other space agency he could name.

His eyes opened, gaze instantly flickering to the dull red light glowing in the corner.

"...fine, but I need paper and something to write with. I can't just spout it all off the top of my head."

The man's grin sent a shiver down his spine. "I think those can be provided, on pain of good behavior."

He nodded to someone behind Alfred, who left the room (based on the click and creak of the door behind him) while a third person stepped forward, grabbing his wrists and unlocking the clasps, freeing his hands and allowing him to rub feeling and blood back into them while he pushing himself up into an awkward sitting position on the floor.

His eyes shut just as Matthew's voice suddenly cut back in near his ear. "I got a read on the signal burst they used to deactivate the wrist braces - I think I can use it to get your feet unbound, but you need to be ready to run, got it?"

Alfred blinked, letting his gaze slide to the side where the door was. Matthew seemed to pick up on the thought, adding a, "If you can get to a car, I can see if it's got a computer I can access to get us out of here."

Alfred blinked again, just in time to hear the door open again. "NOW!"

Though his legs protested the sudden movement, he was more than elated to hear the clasps around his ankles snap open just as he shoved himself up to his feet, and, with the adrenaline and years of sports, shoved himself past the guard and out the door onto a narrow overhang inside what looked to be an old factory.

"Jump down to your left!" Alfred complied, ignoring the shouts and complying, landing with a sharp exhale on a stack of shipping pallets. He scrambled off them to the floor as several shots rang out, clanging against the older wood and sending his heartrate up another notch.

"Don't kill him!" He heard shouted from up above. "But make sure he can't escape!"

He dodged blindly between several more crates, slamming into a door and shoving it open just to see a van waiting right nearby-

-guarded by several surprised mercs with guns. Alfred swallowed and slammed the door shut again, turning down a side hall instead and taking off.

"Try to find another exit," Matthew encouraged. "If we can loop back around, we can still grab the van."

"No promises," Alfred huffed out, barely keeping himself from hitting a wall as he made a sharp turn down another hall. He could hear the people running after him, and he had no doubts he'd be cornered soon if he didn't find that escape route.

Another turn, and shit there was someone there but so was a door-

"Alfred!"

-he grit his teeth, slid under the arm grabbing for him, and slammed into the door, forcing it closed behind him before turning to see what was in front of him. No men, no van, but there was a river-

"Al-"

"Sorry Matt, I don't think we're taking the van."

'_Sorry, maman,_' He silently apologized, then started running forward again, ignoring the alarmed shouts-

A shot rang out, and he nearly stumbled from the pain in his leg, but pushed forward the last three steps before he was falling. He hit the water, and then it was a whole new struggle to keep his head above the waves as the current whisked him away.

~0~0~

"Can I say again how much of a relief it is to have you here with us today?" Antonio, one of the head reporters for HetaNews, asked the younger man sitting across from him.

Alfred grinned lightly, kicking back in the seat in the sweats and jacket someone had given to him after he'd been fished out of Portsmouth Harbor, alive but shaking from more than the cold. "I'm just glad someone saw me before I actually reached the ocean; I don't think I would've stayed up much longer."

"Yes, that was very lucky, not to mention what you've described of your escape to the authorities." The Spanish man agreed, bobbing his head cheerfully.

"I still can't believe it all happened myself," Alfred admitted. "Sorta feels like a bad dream."

"I can only imagine what it was like," Antonio leaned forward, eyes gleaming in interest. "Do you think it could happen again?"

"Probably not if my family has anything to say about it; I'm probably gonna spend the next decade living in a government building somewhere just to make sure no one gets near me without their permission." The American joked.

"Maybe you can let us know what it's like when they release you after that."

Alfred laughed. "I'll make it exclusive just for you guys."

"You're too kind!"

Antonio glanced to his watch, then up to the screen that provided his prompts. "I think that's all the questions we have for now; do you have any last thoughts you want to share before we end the interview?"

Alfred sobered a bit, glancing from Antonio to the watching crewmembers - Matthew included - down to the corner of his glasses which had remained completely empty since he'd hit the water several days ago.

"I hope that the governments and the private sector are still able to work together after this in order to help everyone reach the stars."

Antonio nodded, sobering a bit as well at the words. "I'm sure everyone else would like that too."

The two got up - Alfred with some trouble due to the bandages around his thigh - and shook hands, thanking each other before the reporter left for the backroom, allowing the others to approach and give their own relieved comments before disappearing. Finally it was just him and Matthew left at the side of the main studio, alone on both of their requests.

"Thank you, Matt, for back there." Alfred told him quietly.

"Don't mention it," Matthew replied just as quietly. "And I mean that in full seriousness."

"Yeah, I figured there was something going on when no one brought up my glasses or the jumping thingy once during the chats." The American replied in turn.

"It's not something that any of the A.I. I know want advertised, including myself," Matthew admitted. "We have a lot more freedom when people don't know exactly what we're capable of."

"I'm guessing it's a lot more than you guys let on in your news jobs."

The A.I. hummed but didn't reply. Alfred shook his head and turned to look at him again.

"Your secret's safe with me, Mattie. I don't-" He took a breath. "I don't want to believe you guys are bad, and not just because that always ends up with the A.I. actually going bad."

"Thank you," Matthew replied, smiling. "I don't know how much that fragment told you - the data in your glasses is completely burnt out."

"Mostly just how to get out of there, really. Nothing like, world shattering or anything."

Matthew hummed again. "And your glasses? Are you gonna fix them?"

"Planning on visiting?" Alfred teased out of instinct, more than surprised to see Matthew actually hesitate briefly at that.

"I don't know yet. I guess we'll both have to wait and see."

Alfred smiled at that, fidgeting with his glasses. "I guess we will."

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

AN: So I had this dream about a week ago that went sorta like this, and I got really interested because, accounting for dream logic and plot, it was actually really well thought out overall, so I decided to take a few days to clean it up and then a few more to actually write it.

TBH, this has reinforced my love of writing science-fictiony type things, and I'm probably gonna try and focus more on them on the future when it comes to fanfics for the most part. Not to say I won't still be playing around with magic! But really, think of the potential wealth of futuristic and near-future fics I can come up with that aren't apocalyptic or full of warfare!


End file.
